Mark Cuban Supports Donald Trump, Could Discourage Latino Fans

Dallas Mavericks owner calls Donald Trump “The best thing to happen to politics in a long time.”

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban called Donald Trump the “best thing to happen to politics in a long time” on his private messaging app, “Cyber Dust.”

Trump has made headlines in recent weeks for his racially insensitive comments about multiple nationalities, Mexicans in particular, in addition to firing verbal shots at other Republican candidates and several other public stunts since announcing his plan to run for president.

Contrary to the negative backlash Trump’s remarks have received; Cuban openly praised the fellow billionaire for his “honesty.” “I don’t care what his actual positions are. I don’t care if he says the wrong thing. He says what’s on his mind,” Cuban wrote. “He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years.”

Cuban went on to proclaim that Trump’s unorthodox approach to politics is a game changer in comparison to the exclusive traditional methods.

"Up until Trump announced his candidacy the conventional wisdom was that you had to be a professional politician in order to run," Cuban added.

"You had to have a background that was politically scrubbed. In other words smart people who didn't live perfect lives could never run. Smart people who didn't want their families put under the media spotlight wouldn't run."

Cuban’s support of Trump may not go over so well amongst Latino fans and players. Just five years ago the NBA began its marketing campaign to encourage Latino viewership of games. The initiative called, “ene-be-a” which is the phonetic spelling of “NBA” in Spanish, has contributed to a growth of nearly 15% of Latin viewers since the 2003-04 season.

Cuban’s political alliance with Trump could be a detriment to the NBA’s growing Latino fan base, particularly supporters of his own team.

This isn’t the first time an NBA team owner has been in a situation involving race relations. Remember just last year when former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded telling his girlfriend not to bring Black people to Clippers games or post photos with Black people on social media? That caused a serious controversy; Cuban may have just got himself into a similar predicament.

Trump thanked Cuban for his support in a Tweet posted Tuesday and said he is “rapidly” becoming a fan of his team.